MARP was a collaborative installation/performance framework formed by Anthony Pelchen - first appearing in Natimuk, SW Victoria 2013, then Melaka, Malaysia 2014 and finally in the forecourt of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne, 2015. The project paid homage to a 2012 Malaysian raft journey by Soong Ro Ger and Andy Lim Kah Meng into an endangered rain forest and appropriated the raft for its bigger symbolic potential.
MARP played out a very strong inkling - to bring together a number of compelling artists with two hundred sheep for a (possibly fanciful) call to the Gods, and the owls, for some sort of reconciliation of the irreconcilable...of the sublime and ridiculous attached to living. In particular MARP anchored in the sadness of desperate people attempting to get to Australia in sinking boats - the stuff of Kavisha Mazzella's 2003 song (co-written with Arnold Zable), All God's Beggars. Generosity was at the core of this issue and was central to MARP.
MARP was an evolving and time/site-specific collective of artists which grew to include Anthony Pelchen, Tony Yap, Trevor Flinn, Kavisha Mazzella, Robert Millar, Frank Tagliabue, Alison Eggleton, Pete Grey, Karin Matsuda – Australia; Soong Ro Ger (Roger), Andy Lim Kah Meng – Malaysia; Monica Benova – Slovakia; 200 sheep (and others who climbed on board to assist in Melbourne: Jacqueline Schulz, Matthew Arnold, Matthew Vaughan, William Heathcote, Andrew Lindsay and Mikoto Araki).